The Conference Board's measure of just how awesome everyone feels just hit its highest level since February 2008 driven by an impressive surge in 'Expectations'. This should surprise nobody: as we previewed earlier today [6], "just to make sure that the market closes well green today, the only actual "data" will be yet another reading of consumer "confidence" this time from the Conference Board. Expect this to surge on news that it is Tuesday and stocks have nowhere to go but up, which in turn will send stocks, where else but, up." In short: reflexivity in all its glory. And to think it was just 10 days ago [7]that the market reacted in absolutely the same way to a UMichigan confidence print that beat expectations by the most ever and to the highest since 2007. Perhaps if the US had one consumer confidence metric for every day of the week, all days would be like Tuesdays.
[8]
The last two months has seen 'hope' rise by its fastest rate in 18 months as this 'survey' of sentiment (as opposed to hard economic data) joins the UMich survey at pre-crisis levels of happiness [7]. Of course one can cherry-pick the exuberant and dysphoric but we thought it interesting that the plans to buy a home, a car, or a TV within the next six months fell.
[9]
The reaction, equity prices and Treasury bond yields spike with the latter breaking 2013 highs to 13 months highs.